News Story of the Day

PHILADELPHIA— The results of a lengthy probe into the handling of sexual abuse claims by Roman Catholic dioceses throughout Pennsylvania, which victim advocates say will be the biggest and most exhaustive ever by a U.S. state, could be made public within weeks.

A statewide grand jury spent nearly two years looking into the abuse scandal, and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro has said he plans to address the panel's findings by the end of June.

A former St. Anne’s Indian Residential School student says she has lost faith in Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett after learning the federal government is seeking thousands of dollars in legal fees from a lawyer representing the survivors.

Angela Shisheesh, who attended the Fort Albany, Ont. school infamous for using a homemade electric chair as punishment and entertainment, said she thinks the federal government is warning other lawyers to back down from defending Indigenous people in court.

Child abuse victims and human rights activists from 15 countries, including Switzerland, have launched a new pressure group to campaign against abuse by Catholic clerics.

"The church has got away with crime for too long," said Peter Saunders, a British survivor of abuse, announcing the creation of the Ending Clerical Abuse (ECA) group at a media conference in Geneva on Thursday.

"ECA stands to compel the Roman Catholic church to end clerical abuse, especially child abuse, in order to protect children and to seek justice for victims," added Saunders, a former member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

Of the eight priests, accusations against three of them were already public knowledge: Father Eugene Emo, Father David P. Simon, and Father Francis H. Vogt.

During a Wednesday news conference, attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who says he is representing victims in the case, named the other five priests who face accusations of sexual abuse. He says 17 victims have come forward.

A Pennsylvania judge on Tuesday denied a request from individuals named in a grand jury investigation report intochild sex crimesacross Catholic dioceses seeking to amend the report or bar its publication.

Unsealed court documents obtained by PennLive from the state Office of Attorney General indicate that unidentified individuals or entities named but not indicted in the investigation report sought to have evidentiary hearings prior to the release of the report. The individuals argued that "the reputation interest of the non-indicted named persons will be harmed by the release of the report."

(WTRF) - It's been over a week since the Diocese of Steubenville removed retired priest, Monsignor Mark Froehlich after allegations of sexual abuse were deemed "credible".

But "Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests" or SNAP officials and alleged victims are now claiming the Diocese knew about the complaint since January.

There is a active investigation ongoing with the Belmont County Sheriffs Office regarding the issue, but according to SNAP, they want to see more being done.

Judy Jones, the SNAP Midwest Associate Leader, is standing alongside one of the alleged victims that came forward, Amanda Dutton. "The victim reported it way back in January. What took them so long?" says Jones.

MORRISTOWN, N.J. — A Catholic order in New Jersey has settled lawsuits with five men who claim they were sexually abused by monks and a headmaster at a private school.

The Order of St. Benedict of New Jersey settled with the men who said they were abused while attending the Delbarton School in Morris Township, The Record reported Friday. Six other lawsuits are pending against the order that name faculty at Delbarton and St. Mary's Abbey, which runs the school. Details of the settlements were not disclosed.

In one of the biggest settlements of its kind, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis plans to establish a $210 million trust fund for hundreds of victims of clergy sexual abuse, the archbishop announced on Thursday.

The plan is the result of a yearslong battle and arduous negotiations in one of the country’s most high-profile cases involving abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.

If approved, the settlement will be the largest ever for a sex abuse case involving an archdiocese that has filed for bankruptcy protection and the second largest over all, said Terry McKiernan, co-director and president of BishopAccountability.org, which tracks clergy sex abuse cases. (According to the website, the largest settlement, $660 million, was reached by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and 508 survivors in 2007.)

ST. LOUIS •A Roman Catholic priest twice accused of misconduct involving children will no longer be assigned to a new St. Louis parish after an outpouring of concern from parents, officials with the Archdiocese of St. Louis announced Wednesday.

The Rev. Xiu Hui “Joseph” Jiang had recently been appointed associate pastor of St. Gabriel the Archangel Parish, which is in the St. Louis Hills neighborhood and includes a K-8 school.

The priest was previously charged with statutory sodomy in St. Louis and child endangerment in a Lincoln County case, but charges in both were dropped several years ago. Jiang denied the allegations, and a jury sided with him last year in a civil suit tied to the Lincoln County case.

When a mother complained that the Rev. Norbert F. Orsolits propositioned her teenage son in a bar, the Diocese of Buffalo quietly sent him away for mental health therapy and listed him as "on leave" in its official 1979 directory.

Then, within months, the diocese reassigned him to a new parish, where he later was accused of molesting at least two boys.

Orsolits isn't the only Buffalo priest accused of sexual abusing children who had been marked as "on leave" and then put back into a parish.

Barbara Blaine, founder of SNAP, passed away on Sunday, September 24th, 2017. Her dying was sudden and completely unexpected. Words cannot express our sorrow nor are there words to express our gratitude for her relentless advocacy. She truly was a hero. There is an old saying, “well behaved women seldom make history”. Barbara made history and the world is a better place.